2007-08-04

Mick and I do love Saturdays! After Morning offering, He set out on a morning of errands and doing watering for customers’ plantings. I tried for at least half an hour and many permutations of actions to open a forward from Dianne S which had been originally sent to her by a national committee to impeach Bush and Cheney. I finally gave that up, as I could not, for the life of me, make it work. I am very interested in seeing how the process of impeachment is described, how they are set up to take our names and how carefully and accurately they have brought their case forward in their writing.

I had just a few minutes after that left to work in the office before my early lunch appointment with Carmen, and chose to use the time to collect a couple of new recipes, one for mac and cheese which uses truffle oil – gotta try that! – and one for grilled lemon chicken, which we put to use later in the day.

Carmen and I went to Bristol, a very nice old restaurant, in from us towards Louisville, in the town of St. Matthews. I had a perfectly wonderful steak – they called it a sandwich, but I dispensed with the bread and enjoyed it without the bun. Carmen, who loves spicy food, had a pasta dish which uses chilies, which she said was excellent as well. We had such a good time and a good conversation.

Then we came back to Camelot, where Carmen helped me to make my portion of the pot-luck picnic. I made a cake (no biggie; I shamelessly made it from a Duncan Hines mix) and decorated it with fresh fruit, cooked up some pasta for a pasta salad and stuffed some eggs while Carmen performed her magic on baked beans and helped me open cans and jars. Poor gal! I kept interrupting her work to ask for help, as my hands just don’t get the job done on anything needing strength in hands or wrists. She was most patient with me!

I showed Carmen the lemon chicken recipe and she said that, though it looked really good, she knew of another marinade which uses ranch dressing and soy sauce that also grills up nicely. So she made half the chicken with the lemon recipe and the other half with the ranch/soy sauce recipe, and placed the batches in two separate plastic bags for the journey up to Avalon.

Carmen went on ahead in her own car to Avalon about an hour before we left, as she planned to spend the night there and help Melissa with farm work tomorrow. Mick and I were supposed to rendezvous with Steve F here at Camelot, but he was playing least-in-sight and finally I called him to suggest that we meet him at a Marathon station right outside of Bedford and lead him in to the very remote Avalon from there, and that worked out well.

Shortly after we three arrived at the farm, Gary, Valerie, her 7 –year-old daughter, Ocean and a boy named Brennan of roughly the same age, who is neighbors with Valerie and who has struck up a friendship with Ocean, also arrived, making the party complete. I told them, “We have a Council of Nine.”

We had a great time. Melissa has done wonders there on the farm in just the short time she has been working there. The kids loved the hiking trails, taking the shorter of the two, which goes up to the top of our highest knob. And the food was delicious. Valerie, who was standing buff at the grill, inadvertently created a whole new recipe for grilled chicken, as neither she nor Gary, who was her humble grilling student, knew that Carmen had made two different recipes, and so the two bags were combined for, as Valerie said, one bag had much more liquid than the other, and she wanted to moisten all the pieces the same amount. I am here to report that soy-ranch-lemon chicken is absolutely delicious!

Mick opened a bottle of wine for the seven adults and we sat enjoying it and each other as evening came quietly over the meadow. We finally left shortly before nine PM.

It was a very fortuitous timing, as the heavens lowered while we were driving up the steep access road and soon there was a torrential downpour which lasted about half an hour, most of the ride home. Unfortunately, the rain never got as far south as we live here at Camelot. Avalon is northeast of us by just short of 50 miles. Steve had left when we did, and as we were leaving, Mel and Carmen had almost finished cleaning everything away from the picnic table and so they, too, had moved inside and were nicely dry when the real downpour set in.

Romi would have made it, of course, as he loves being at Avalon, but as it happens, he set out early this morning for his vacation, visiting his Mom in Czeska, which is what people there call the Czech Republic. I know he will have a wonderful time! He and his Mom are very close and he blooms under her constant affection, regard and good food. I know she does too.

Mick and I offered the Gaia Meditation in the car coming home, with me praying at the end – always better not to have the driver in prayer, a sub-heading of the general directive, no phone calls while driving! Praying to the Creator is seriously long-distance (or is it) but the principle adheres.

We ended the evening with me starting a Georgette Heyer novel and Mick cleaning the kitchen. It was such a fun day! I do love a fiesta! And of course the company was the best!

We turned out the lights and put the kitties out of my bedroom at midnight.